Glorification of violence is harmful

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Friday December 28, 2012 5:28 AM

As our nation continues to mourn the tragic deaths of the 20 children and six adult educators
whose lives were brutally cut short by the gunman who broke into Sandy Hook Elementary School in
Newtown, Conn., it also is furiously debating gun-control policy and the culture of gun
violence.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows 52 percent of Americans believe the Sandy Hook
massacre is a sign of a much larger societal problem and not an isolated incident. When President
Barack Obama spoke to the Newtown community during their prayer vigil on Dec. 16, he emphasized
that “no single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless
act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction.”

The clarion call across the country among those who favor tougher gun laws is for the
reinstatement of the assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004 under President George W. Bush.
However, while the arguments on Capitol Hill will focus on concerns such as closing “gun show
loopholes” and the various features of assault weapons, such as threaded barrels, we must get
serious about combating the societal influences that glorify gun violence.

With more information emerging about the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, we are learning that he
spent a lot of time playing the military war game
Call of Duty in his mother’s basement and had a fascination with weapons. This has
prompted questions about possibly banning violent video games.

We had this discussion in 1999 when it was reported that Columbine shooter Eric Harris created
his own levels of the violent game
Doom and posted them online. Twelve years after the Columbine tragedy, the Supreme Court
ruled that California’s 2005 law to prohibit selling violent and sexually explicit games to minors
was unconstitutional. Congress will be tackling this issue again as Sen. Jay Rockefeller. D-W.Va.,
is introducing a bill to study the effects of violent video games on children.

Banning violent video games is about as likely to happen as Hollywood ceasing to produce movies
such as
Savages, and we cannot solely place the blame on these games for school shootings. But
here’s what we do know. Studies in publications such as
The Journal of Pediatrics have linked the brutality in video games to hostile behavior in
boys, and the countless hours some spend immersed in a virtual world of slaughter has led
psychologists to conclude that intense gaming is addictive. So this is where the cultural filtering
needs to begin.

We have said this every time a gun tragedy happens with young men who have isolated themselves
with their consoles. Like movies, video games are rated, so it is the parents’ responsibility to
monitor what’s going into the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Also, there’s no getting around this
question as we learn more about Lanza’s troubled youth: What cultural or societal benefits can we
identify in letting young boys play violent games with mature ratings where the rewards of victory
are associated with killing, maiming and obscene language? I can think of none.

One of the questions Obama asked in his remarks of comfort to the Newtown residents was, “Can we
claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them (our children) know they are loved
and teaching them to love in return?” The obvious answer is no, and gun legislation alone won’t
address the ethical matter of this question.

We have to take an honest look at ourselves and the culture of gun violence that we have allowed
to permeate our society. Although no studies have directly connected video-game violence to
violence in young men, how can we expect them to have healthy family and peer interactions if they
are inundated with such deviant entertainment?

Jessica A. Johnson is an assistant professor of English composition at Central State University
and writes for the Athens (Ga.) Banner-Herald.